AMA: HackerOne Former Vice President of Product Marketing, April Rassa on Influencing the Product Roadmap
April 2 @ 10:00AM PT
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👋 April Rassa
👋 Hi all, my name is April Rassa, I'm based in the Bay Area (northern California)
💼 I lead Solutions Marketing at Clari and advise companies on GTM strategies
👀 Key topics top of mind is how best to using AI in our field (best practices), pricing and packaging shifts, and how best to influence the product roadmap.
🤝 Topics that you can help others with: I'm pretty open to any topic topi of mind. Hit me up, if I don't know how to help, I'll let you know! :)
🍦 Favorite ice cream flavor: Pistachio
How do you influence product roadmap as a product marketer.
This is an interview question we get all the time
Celigo Vice President Product Marketing | Formerly HackerOne, Cohere, Box, Google, Adobe • 6y
Captain obvious here but customers and data. Framing stories and pain points mapped to personas helps, partnering with your Product team so you're locked in the customer ...
2124 Views
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Celigo Vice President Product Marketing | Formerly HackerOne, Cohere, Box, Google, Adobe • 6y
The PMM team at my previous employer, HackerOne reported to Marketing. PM's purpose in the universe is to build the right product by translating customer needs into produ...
891 Views
1 request
Celigo Vice President Product Marketing | Formerly HackerOne, Cohere, Box, Google, Adobe • 6y
Sure, as the first product marketer, you need to arm yourself with customer insights (be the voice of the customer), be able to clearly define who you're selling to, what...
1567 Views
1 request
Celigo Vice President Product Marketing | Formerly HackerOne, Cohere, Box, Google, Adobe • 6y
To be clear, Product marketing doesn't priortize feature on a roadmap, you enable Product with the data and business case to prioritize features. Arm the teams with the d...
1507 Views
1 request
Celigo Vice President Product Marketing | Formerly HackerOne, Cohere, Box, Google, Adobe • 6y
Build strong relationships with your product team. The product plan presents strategic goals and initiatives spanning a long timeframe. The release plan tracks specific p...
1590 Views
1 request
Celigo Vice President Product Marketing | Formerly HackerOne, Cohere, Box, Google, Adobe • 6y
Great question. Oftentimes customers’ requests for added capabilities or improvements to current features are already in your product roadmap. When customer feedback corr...
1560 Views
2 requests
Celigo Vice President Product Marketing | Formerly HackerOne, Cohere, Box, Google, Adobe • 6y
When a product is in development you typically will be working on a launch plan in parallel. These elements include: - GTM strategy: product adoption strategy, pricing/...
1958 Views
2 requests
Celigo Vice President Product Marketing | Formerly HackerOne, Cohere, Box, Google, Adobe • 6y
There are probably three major questions to answer when operationalizing a GTM plan: What is the governance? Meaning who is in charge? What is the division of labor? Who ...
2529 Views
2 requests
How do product marketers lead a product launch when roadmaps and priorities are constantly changing?
There is a lack of alignment at my company and our teams act in silos. Consequently, my roadmap and goals seem to change on a weekly if not bi-weekly basis because marketing keeps getting pulled in different directions. There needs to be some sort of roadmap and role that aligns sales with product, but I'm not sure if that should come from product marketing or not. I want to initiate this conversation, but I don't know if it's overstepping my role or not. Advice here?
Celigo Vice President Product Marketing | Formerly HackerOne, Cohere, Box, Google, Adobe • 6y
As the CMO of the product, product marketing should take the lead and make sure the teams are aligned. This may require you to set up a meeting with Product Management (a...
827 Views
2 requests
Celigo Vice President Product Marketing | Formerly HackerOne, Cohere, Box, Google, Adobe • 6y
I'm fairly new to HackerOne but I can tell you how I've done it before and its worked. We've had a customer insights meeting with the sales leadership team, we review the...
873 Views
1 request
Celigo Vice President Product Marketing | Formerly HackerOne, Cohere, Box, Google, Adobe • 6y
At HackerOne we have open lines of communications across teams, everyone has visibility into each department's OKRs and we have a weekly company-wide AMAs where anyone c...
1598 Views
1 request
Celigo Vice President Product Marketing | Formerly HackerOne, Cohere, Box, Google, Adobe • 6y
You need to understand which customer segments you will tackle first and in what order. Not only will this exercise help define your Go To Market strategy but it also wil...
1367 Views
1 request
Celigo Vice President Product Marketing | Formerly HackerOne, Cohere, Box, Google, Adobe • 6y
As a product marketer, you don't manage scoping releases. Product managers need to be accountable for managing release dates and minor updates. If those dates are slippin...
806 Views
2 requests
What role should a customer advisory board have in influencing your product roadmap, and why?
Product marketing owns the customer advisory board but product management owns the roadmap.
Celigo Vice President Product Marketing | Formerly HackerOne, Cohere, Box, Google, Adobe • 6y
CABs are great. Customer advisory boards have several common objectives in mind, including:- To create champions for the brand- To validate product ideas and guide the pr...
2107 Views
1 request